Perfection
by Danny Phantom SG-1
Summary: Sure, their parents seem like the perfect guardians, but that's only for as long as their children can keep up the image.  Rypay angsty friendship. Ryan centric oneshot.


**A/N: Every fan of Ryan and Sharpay angst does it. It's cliche, almost to the point of being unreasonably irritating...but it's fun. And everyone has their own perspectives on it. After all, cliches are cliches because they make sense and work, no? Why mess with a good thing? Here's my take on the Evans family's hidden problems. It can be read as canon because events from the movies have been manipulated to fit my needs. So...let me know if I screwed up this classic plotline or if you like my take. Thank you.**

**Acknowledgement: that-crazy-jesus-girl-sarah for the (subconscious as it may have been...) inspiration for this fic. Check out "If Only" by said author. It's awesome and, I suppose, could even be considered a lead-in to this story. **

All summer long, the Evans' parents had proven that they were classy. They always wore expensive clothes and bought anything their children's hearts desired.

All summer, they had proven that they were kind. They welcomed the Wildcats with open arms and treated them with respect.

All summer, they had proven that they were the perfect parents and it would be needless to say that everyone else at the Lava Springs Resort was jealous of Sharpay and Ryan.

They all thought they knew…but they had no idea.

All summer long, the Evans' parents had acted amiably in public. They had to keep up their façade of the perfect all-American family. They made it look easy. They made it look real. They made everybody believe them.

But everybody was wrong.

The twins played along seemingly perfectly, knowing that, to do otherwise would have dire consequences. A little bit of their parents' insanity had shone through at those moments when Mr. Evans showed his obsession with keeping Ryan's hat in its proper place. Not a hair was to be out of line. But Ryan would always put it back to a more comfortable position by the end of the day, of course. His heart wanted him to rebel so much; to tell everyone in the world the horrific truth about their parents; to point out to everyone that his father's obsession with perfection was unnatural and would result in the injury of more than one person. But moving his hat was the only act of rebellion he could even consider doing.

The family sat at their dining room table for dinner. All was dead silent. They wore the proper attire for family dining. Mr. Evans and Ryan in suits and Sharpay and Mrs. Evans in formal dresses. While their parents ate away, as primly as inhumanly possible, Ryan and Sharpay picked at their food carefully. When Sharpay went to take a bite to eat, she saw her father look at her scrupulously, making sure she did nothing wrong, from placing it into her mouth to chewing it thoroughly and wiping her clean lips with a napkin in a lady-like manner. They had to eat on eggshells around their parents.

Their mother appeared to be bored. Nothing exciting was happening tonight. Yet.

"Why don't you children show us your routine for the musical?" she asked, without looking up at them.

The twins cast sidelong glances at each other and each held the other's gaze for mere milliseconds. It was all they dared to do.

Their father, however, lifted his head and looked at each of them calmly.

"Well…aren't you going to show us? It's good to practice in front of an audience before auditions, you know. You have a better chance at winning."

Of course, this was a normal statement for any parent to make. It was reasonable. But the way their father said it seemed so much more like a threat than advice. They had already lost the lead roles once. It would not be accepted anymore.

Not that it had really been before…but that was another story.

Sharpay and Ryan cautiously stood up from the table. They did not look at each other, but they went to the family room to grab their CD player. Kelsi's music was recorded on a CD for them…but they had to sing and dance perfectly at the same time, all while wearing their formal attire. They had no time to change.

They walked back into the kitchen to find their parents waiting for them, semi-amused expressions on their faces.

Sharpay slowly set down the stereo and gently clicked the 'play' button. They put on their best stage smiles and set off singing and dancing. They performed flawlessly for the first verse and chorus, but then trouble came.

Sharpay was a half beat—no, a fourth beat—off. They saw their father's gaze scrutinize more intently. He knew something was wrong. Ryan and Sharpay knew something was wrong. But Ryan would not let his father figure out what it was. Sharpay gave him that brief, pleading glance and he didn't even hesitate.

He stopped. Everything. He didn't sing; he didn't dance. He just stood there and let Sharpay continue dancing. After all, no matter how offbeat she was, she was still dancing. Only the worst dancer got punished. And lately, that dancer always seemed to be Ryan.

He barely flinched when his father rose sharply from his seat, his eyes ablaze with that horrifying anger Ryan saw almost every night now. He stomped over to his son and lifted the boy by the collar of his shirt, looking into Ryan's eyes with his own burning pits of fire.

"No one told you to stop. Why did you stop?" he asked, his calm voice betraying his built-up irrational rage.

Ryan hesitated, but replied firmly, "I just screwed up. I forgot the moves."

The flame burst from his father's eyes as he pushed Ryan hard against the wall. Ryan made a choking sound as Mr. Evans's arm crushed his lungs and left him completely incapacitated.

"You are an Evans. We do not 'forget the moves' and we most certainly do not 'screw up'. Do you think our family gained all our prestige and respect by 'screwing up'? Or by 'forgetting'?"

"No," Ryan whispered his reply, trying to avert his father's death glare.

"I think you do. Otherwise, why would you continuously do those things? Maybe I just have to pack it in harder."

Ryan uttered what seemed to be a stifled 'no', but he was cut off by Mr. Evans's fist flying at his face. The force of the punch pushed his head to the side as his cheek smacked against the wall. His father let him go for a few glorious moments, letting him slide to the floor, but then he proceeded to pummel Ryan in the stomach and chest…areas where no one would notice the bruises. After all, their exterior image needed to be wholesome and perfect.

By now, Sharpay had stopped all movement and was wincing as she watched her brother take the beating that should have been hers. She noticed with sick realization that her mother no longer seemed to be bored. Rather, she seemed to be enjoying the sound of her only son wailing for mercy from her father's fists. She felt pathetic and weak and helpless, but couldn't bring herself to do anything more than just stand there.

When the gruesome sounds of wallops hitting her brother's body subsided, all that was left were Ryan's soft, almost inaudible sobs. Mr. Evans backed away from his son, a furnace by now burning in his eyes, and commanded him, "Do it again. This time, no screwing up."

Ryan nodded nearly imperceptibly. He wiped away his tears quickly and bit back groans as he rose to a standing position. He walked over to Sharpay, whose eyes were also brimming with tears and they started up again. Their stage faces were not as believable as before, but, of course, they had been forced to take intensive acting lessons all their lives. It was close enough.

This time, they got farther, neither of them wanting to screw up, but Sharpay's tears clouded her vision and she didn't see Ryan's foot in the way. She fell flat on the floor and the world seemed to stop. She looked back up at Ryan, terrified.

Mr. Evans was soon running over to her…but not the way a normal parent runs up to their injured child. It was more like the way a mountain lion runs up to his prey. He grabbed her by the wrist roughly and pulled her up. She squealed shrilly in fear.

"WHAT WAS THAT?!? How do you even do that? Never in my life have I seen anything more uncoordinated and embarrassing. I ought to—"

He was cut off by a smack in the jaw. Ryan was glaring at his father, his hand held firmly in a fist. Mr. Evans let go of Sharpay and she fell to the floor. Both of them gave Ryan a look of sheer disbelief.

"It was my fault. I tripped her. My foot was in the way," Ryan said, his voice shaking. Whether it was from rage or fear, Sharpay could not tell, but she was betting on a mixture of both.

The pits of hell opened up in his father's eyes and he grabbed Ryan by the throat, pinning him against the wall once more.

"You. Do. Not. Hit. Me," he said in a dangerously low voice. He pressed his hand more pitilessly against his son's throat until he was sure the boy could suck no more air into his pathetic lungs.

Ryan gasped and reached for air, but to no avail. Spots danced lightly in front of his eyes and blackness came in from the outskirts of his vision. Seeing Ryan's head begin to sag, his father finally loosened his grip, leaving dark bruises in his path. But no one would notice. Ryan wore shirts with collars for a reason.

He began kicking Ryan and the bloodcurdling screams her brother emitted made Sharpay turn away and cover her ears, tears streaming down her face. It shouldn't be this way. It was so wrong. This couldn't the price of an ideal image; and if it was, it most certainly was not worth this.

"The Evans family is perfect, Ryan. And you do not fit the bill," his father raved angrily at his son.

However, not ready to risk any broken bones or long-term damage which could peel apart the carefully constructed layers of flawlessness the Evans family had built up, Mr. Evans stopped brutalizing his son. Ryan felt blood in his mouth and continued moaning, but he did not spit it out. That would leave a stain in the carpet. And that was most certainly not perfect.

And all the while, Mrs. Evans just smiled primly in amusement as she sipped her tea.

HSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSM

The twins finally perfected the dance after a few more tries and a few less bruises each time. They were dismissed without finishing their meals and they headed upstairs to their rooms: their pretenses of perfect, spoiled lives.

Tomorrow, Sharpay would go back to being the Ice Princess. She would boss people around to keep them away from her. To keep them from learning the truth. She could never let them get too close.

Tomorrow, Ryan would hang out with the Wildcats, trying to gain popularity. He couldn't be the perfect, jock son his father wanted (watching his father put his arm around Troy Bolton in a fatherly manner on the golf course at Lava Springs had made him ill), but he could feign being friends with the best of them. Of course, none of them would ever truly understand him or be his great chums. But it was a nice façade.

As Sharpay was about to head into her bedroom, she looked back at Ryan, water filling her eyes.

"Ry?"

He turned to look at her and saw with disdain the bruise on her arm that he could have prevented.

"I think you're perfect," she whispered gently, but it carried with it all the meaning in the world.

He smiled as much as possible at her.

That made one of them.

**I like making Ryan feel inadequate...could you tell? Let me know how I did with my second HSM angsty fic. Good or bad, criticism or compliment, I would really like to hear from you. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.**


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